Contemplations about Wayfinders Guide to Eberron
Welcome to our semi-review series. In this series we will do a few thing. We will start by sharing our current reading list. We think it's important to share what we are currently reading because it's neat to see what things are interesting to people and influencing what they are currently reading. Then we will do our kind of review. We say kind of review because we're going to just go on and on about things that we liked, may get into some thoughts about what could be better, and do it no systematic order! So welcome to the first article!
Our Current Reading List:
Blades in the Dark
Mutants in the Night
Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes
So let's start by saying we absolutely loved Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron. In our opinion this is what a world book should look like. In the case you are unfamiliar with Eberron, it is a very different D&D world. Essentially the main continent is locked in a unsteady peace treaty between five nations. They were once part of a whole empire, but after the death of a ruler they fell into conflict. The conflict lasted a hundred years and during this time non-allied groups called Dragonmarked houses (guilds with special magical features) profiteered from the war becoming quite powerful. The conflict finally ceased when one of the nations disappeared overnight. You start play a few years into this peace treaty.
The absolute best thing about the book is the detail and choices of information presented. Throughout the book Keith Baker and the team make an intentional decision to give the reader enough information to get hooked into the world, but just enough to do that. It seems they really understand what is useful at the table for the type of games we run.
To give one great example of this we could talk about The Mourning, which is the destruction of the country overnight. This is a major mystery in the game. All of the nations want to understand what caused this. In this book you get several different accounts of what The Mourning looked like to people who survived it. You get a few rumors as to what different people think may have caused it. You get no answers and are explicitly told this is your game, you decide what caused it.
We like this approach for many different reasons. The first is as a DMs we don't need to keep a bunch of stuff straight in our head. We don't need to know how caused it and why and maintain some type of continuity. Secondly this makes it a player and DM friendly document. You can use it as both without getting expectations up or ruining big mysteries. Finally it is impossible to read things like this and not get thinking about possible adventures, ways you should change your own world, and cool NPC ideas. It's just a well of inspiration.
So going through the book, the start is about what Eberron is. It goes through the different types of stories Eberron is made to tell, along with some fundamental bits of what makes Eberron Eberron. It's great because it really sets you up with what to expect from the rest of the book. Being able to get an idea for the tone and important parts of the setting from the start got us real excited about what we were going to read.
The next bit is all about the history of the world. It breaks down all of the important things you need to know about the worlds locations and history, while giving you hooks for characters you might want to create, in just over 20 pages. This is quite impressive for a game that has 15 other sources books on the same place in it's recommended reading list. It really felt like the writers went through the work of saying, what do people really need to know about these places to make them care about it.
The races are neat. The Warforged have a clear place in Eberron, given the story. It does have interesting treatments of Elves, Half-Elves, Halflings and Gnomes. Halfings ride dinosaurs through their planes and gnomes live in a society full of intrigue and espionage. The Dwarves feel a bit more standard but going into depth about who they are is still interesting. Changlings (beings able to morph the way they look) and Shifters (sort of were-people) seem to fit the world, even if they feel a little forced given the rest of the material. Kalashtar seem a little out of left field compared to everything else. Even though the last few races seem a bit out of place there was great treatment of the culture of the groups and they have all been made very interesting. For example they give reasons as to how changlings choose different forms and what that might mean in their society.
Next up is the Dragonmarks. This is a cool bit of Eberron lore. Some people are born with a Dragonmark, which is a symbol that gives that individual special powers depending on the mark. Certain Dragonmarks exist within certain races. Furthermore, Dragonmarked people have come together to create houses around their marks. This has allowed them to take control of certain markets. There are houses that corner the market on construction, land travel, air and water travel, healing, and many other things. These sort of independent profiteering organization along side of the warring nations is a lot of what gives Eberron it's flavor.
The final two parts are magic items then a location, Sharn. The magic items section is neat, but nothing much to talk about here. Some neat ideas for how to make caster equipment a bit more interesting, other than that nothing particularly different from any other magic item sections. The last part of the book goes into detail about the city of Sharn, which is the most populated city on the continent. It does a wonderful job of making the city intriguing. It's a city made of extremely high towers, interconnected through bridges, and flying carts. It's a fascinating place both for being built on ruins of older cities and for the general dynamic created within the city.
We highly recommend this book. Even if your not planning on running an Eberron game it is full of great ideas. The amount of information presented for each section seems to be just enough to enthrall you but not so much to overwhelm. Definitely check it out!
Did we miss anything important? Something else we should check out? Leave a comment below.
As always if you want to share an encounter check out or about and share page, send us an email at tabletoprpgencounters@gmail.com, or find us on facebook and tell us about the encounter!
